Department of Excuses: BDS at Brooklyn College

BDS—the “boycott, divestment, sanctions” movement—styles itself a “global movement against Israeli apartheid.” The group promotes economic sanctions against Israeli businesses, cultural institutions, and universities in the name of what it calls Palestinian equality. According to BDS founding member Omar Bhargouti, such equality requires at least three things: “ending Israel’s 1967 occupation and colonization, ending Israel’s system of racial discrimination, and respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands from which they were ethnically cleansed.” As others have noted, the third goal is a veiled demand for an end to Israel.

Relevant Links

BDS SecretsRan Baratz, Jewish Ideas Daily. Norman Finkelstein caused a stir last week by admitting the obvious: Members of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement care less for human rights than they do for Israel’s destruction.

Adorno, Butler, and the Death of IronyAlex Joffe, Jewish Ideas Daily. Jews like Adorno are unwillingly co-opted into the anti-Zionist cause; Jews like Butler, in thrall to values they believe will exempt them, willingly lend their Jewishness to the same cause.

Last Thursday, Brooklyn College hosted a discussion of the BDS movement by a panel consisting of Bhargouti and Judith Butler, a Berkeley philosophy professor and BDS supporter. It was co-sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine—and the Brooklyn College political science department. New York elected officials called for the event’s cancelation or withdrawal of school or department sponsorship. But the professors stood firm, backed by not only Brooklyn College President Karen Gould but New York City Mayor Bloomberg, who defended “an academic department’s right to sponsor a forum on any topic.”

In fact, few of the critics questioned the “right” of Brooklyn College or its political science department to sponsor the event. The question is not the rights but the responsibilities and judgment of the college and the department, neither of which has offered a good defense of the decision to sponsor the BDS panel.

No one will dispute President Gould’s assertion that “providing an open forum to discuss important topics, even those many find highly objectionable, is a centuries-old practice on university campuses around the country” or that fostering a “spirit of inquiry and critical debate” is part of the mission of an educational institution. In sponsoring the BDS panel, goes the argument, the political science department was endorsing not BDS but discussion and debate. The department itself has insisted that it is open to co-sponsoring similar events “representing any point of view.”

Presumably, however, the department will not lend its name to just any panel at which a view is aired. If the department’s policy is to sponsor events that foster discussion, what kinds of events foster these goals and, thus, merit its sponsorship? President Gould’s comments suggest one criterion: an event’s organizers should share and be willing to work toward the goal of fostering open discussion. This criterion does not demand that more than one view be represented on the stage. It is enough if the speaker, however committed to a single view, present the argument in a spirit that invites further inquiry. A presentation sponsored by scholars might also be reasonably expected to adhere to the scholarly view that getting at the truth is more important than defending a political position.

By the same standard, an academic department should not sponsor organizers and speakers who intend merely to proselytize. If the faculty decides an event is worth sponsoring even though its organizers and speakers do not seek open discussion, the department should act to ensure that such discussion takes place anyway—by offering students a balanced selection of readings beforehand, arranging a moderated discussion afterward, or sponsoring another speaker with a different perspective.

In applying these standards of sponsorship, there are hard cases—but the BDS event was not one of them. The way the event’s supporters described it demonstrates that it was never intended as an “open forum to discuss important topics.” “Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine,” the group’s website announced, “presents BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement for Palestinian Rights,” a “strategy that allows people of conscience to play an effective role in the Palestinian struggle for justice” by gathering for a lecture “on the importance of BDS in helping END Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine.” When Judith Butler finally spoke at the event, she claimed she was not asking “anyone to join a movement.” But the student sponsors plainly organized the event solely to boost their cause. There is nothing wrong with that, any more than it is wrong to invite people to a camp meeting for the purpose of converting them; but it is wrong for an academic department to co-sponsor such a meeting.

Glenn Greenwald of the UK Guardiandefended the event this way: “Why shouldn't advocates of a movement be able to gather at an event to debate tactics and strategies without having someone there who objects to the movement itself?” Similarly, when Butler spoke—before she remembered that the event was supposed to be an exercise in “critical judgment” and “democratic debate”—she observed that she had expected it to be a “conversation with a few dozen student activists in the basement of a student center.” There is nothing wrong with activists getting together to plot strategies for delegitimizing Israel, but it is wrong for an academic department to sponsor such a gathering.

The way the BDS panel’s organizers, defenders, and participants explained the event makes a laughingstock of those who stood up with a straight face and claimed that the decision to sponsor the panel was about fostering a “spirit of inquiry.” At best, the decision was thoughtless—and that has been the department’s last line of defense. “We just [expletive] co-sponsored it,” tweeted Brooklyn College political science professor Corey Robin amid the controversy, as if the act were meaningless—as if it made sense, when presented with a request to sponsor an anti-Zionist recruitment and strategy session, to reach for the department’s rubber stamp.

Others at Brooklyn College know better. Before the event, as the controversy gathered steam, the school’s faculty overwhelmingly supported resisting the politicians’ attempts to tell it what to do. But when political science chair Paisley Currah asked other departments to become additional co-sponsors of the event, BC English professor Eric Alterman reports that in an emphatic rebuke to the political science department, no other department agreed to do so. They understood, as the political science department pretends not to, that sponsorship is a meaningful act. Alterman goes farther, arguing that progressives have a particular “responsibility to condemn the intellectual masquerade in which BDS engages and the destructive consequences it supports.” One need not agree with him to conclude that the political science department’s decision, far from being a service to the mission of critical inquiry, was a dereliction of its duty to students and an embarrassment to Brooklyn College.

Jonathan Marks is an Associate Professor of Politics at Ursinus College.

I wonder if these self-proclaimed liberals would approve a panel discussion of boycott, divest and santions against Islamist regimes and Muslim anti-Semitism. My guess, based on what I have read, is that they would not. They even object to pro-Israeli demonstrations and harass Israeli or even US conservative speakers. Very Orwellian.

But conversely: if BC were hosting Mort Klein - who still has not gotten around to filling out the forms for the ZOA to regain its non-profit status- to give a presentation on all of Palestine as Greater Israel, including the systematic cleansing of all Arabs from the "Holy Land," JID and Marks would be endorsing it.

People do not loose property rights because the flee or are driven out of their homes and the right of return and the Palestinian's right to their property are fundamental rights in International Law and recognized in UN resolutions. As to being a "veiled demand for the end of Israel" this claim is a like slave owner objecting to emancipation because the former slaves might ask for reparations. Of course an Israeli living in a Palestinian"s home in Jerusalem would not welcome an investigation
into his title and might be disturbed if the Palestinian owner even wanted to visit his home and see his garden.

As to an "end of Israel" what is wrong with a modern democratic state belonging to all of its citizens equally.

Lets not forget that Jews are recovering property that was taken by the Nazis in the 1930's.

Most of the Palestinians who fled were tenants, a minority like the al-Husaynis, Khalidis and Barghoutis were land owners. The same notables who incited against Jewish immigration and the sale of land to Jews also sold land to Jews. (See the book "The Claim of Dispossession" by Arieh Avneri.) Mere possession of a "key" simply indicates tenancy, not ownership. Of the small household land owners one then must consider that the number of descendants of each would average 9-10. So a mud hut that held 7 people and a small garden would then belong to 60-70 individuals in the current day. Also keep in mind that the current “occupiers” of said properties are many cases are likely Israeli Arabs, who would be very upset to see their properties split up and given to distant relatives. There was a small cluster middle class Arabs who had nice homes – the majority were fellahin peasantry.

Jews who pursued restitution almost entirely received compensation, not the actual property. The exceptions are largely portable property such as artwork, not land. In the 1950s Israel established a fund for compensation based on then current land values which was largely but not entirely rejected.

One must also consider that such compensation is always linked to a peace agreement. There is no peace agreement.

I'll leave the issue of compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries including land owned by the JNF in Syria for a different time, "international law" gets bandied about loosely as a term, but there is no actual law that states that refugees necessary get the return of their property and UN "resolutions" have no standing whatsoever as "international law". However UN Resolution 194 was rejected by the Arabs and 394 states: “ the Governments concerned to undertake measures to ensure that refugees, whether repatriated or resettled, will be treated without any discrimination either in law or in fact.”. The UN Charter of Human RIghts, Article 13 para 2 refers to the right to return to “one’s country”, not one’s home. Since Israel is not “their country”. Arguably the west bank could be construed as such, as could Gaza.

I would argue that Palestinians have been more than compensated over the years through Israeli, EU, US and UN funding (the latter mostly coming from the first two) and the the primary culprits in the Palestinian tragedy has been the Arab States who promised the Palestinian Arabs a genocide against the Jews of the Yishuv, failed to deliver, kept them in poverty in refugee camps for generations and failed to give them naturalization rights.

As for BDS - the correct meaning of the acronym is Blame, Distort and Slander.